Reminder on Sustainable Development Goals
-Akeem Gbadamosi
In the year 2000, the World Leaders reached an agreement on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) brought a new dimension on the understanding of poverty and related policies. The MDGs introduced a powerful and digestive narrative of development appealing to publics and parliaments for fundraising towards development assistance. Poverty was perceived as multidimensional material deprivations describe as lack of income, water, education and health services. While this was a laudable, it unfortunately was too restricted by ignoring the broader understanding of poverty as a human, lived experience, and its caused as embedded in social, economic and political structures
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have come to fill this gap by expanding the MDGs Agenda to meet the context of a world increasing aware of Human right and capabilities, growing inequalities both within and between countries, as well as the urgency of addressing the concern for climate change threatening the ecosystem and humanity.
John Patrick Ngoyi, Director, Justice, Development & Peace Commission wrote in their publication titled Sustainable Development Goals (From MDGs –SDGs) Action towards 2030 + Paris Declaration on Climate Change opined “the SDGs are universal, meaning they are equally applicable to all countries. They include challenging targets for rich countries as well as poor.”
By calling for a broad and inclusive involvement of the various stakeholders of our common home to take part in the determination of the next development Agenda to replace the MDGs, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) deliberately called for a process that would join together development concerns to the sustainability issues from Rio+20. The result was the adoption of 17 SDGs and 169 Targets by the UNGA on the 25 September, 2015. This was an unprecedented process that brought together politicians, private sector and civil society group at the local, national and international levels with various backgrounds and interests sometimes opposing each other. It was indeed a game of who is who, capacity to influence what, seeking to have one’s priorities and preferences represented in the final outcome of the document to be adopted by the UNGA. Most stakeholders rightly claim ownership of the SDGs.
If cooperation between national government constituted the precondition for the adoption of the SDGs Agenda at the international level, it will now take greater influencing capacity to see such because it is at this national level that the battles for implementation have to be fought and won. Organizing nationality is pre-condition for a genuine implementation of SDGs in a way and manner that will benefit the people and Mother Earth. It is at the national level that the people can hold the Government and the private sector to account.
Sustainable Development Goals and Targets are as follows:
Goal 1: NO POVERTY: End poverty in all its form everywhere.
Goal 2: NO HUNGER: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.
Goal 3: GOOD HEALTH AND WELL-BEING: Ensure Healthy lives and promote Well-being for all at all ages.
Goals 4: QUALITY EDUCATION: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all.
Goal 5: GENDER EQUALITY: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
Goal 6: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
Goal 7: AFFORDABLE AND CLEAN ENERGY: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.
Goal 8- GOOD JOBS AND ECONOMIC GROWTH: Promote sustained inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
Goal 9- INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and faster innovation.
Goal 10- REDUCED INEQUALITIES: Reduce inequality within and among countries.
Goal 11- SUSTAINABLE CITIES AND COMMUNITIES: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
Goal 12- RESPONSIBLE CONSUMPTION AND PRODUCTION: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.
Goal 13- CLIMATE ACTION: CLIMATE CHANGE ACTION: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
Goal 14- LIFE BELOW WATER: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Goal 15- LIFE ON LAND: SUSTAINABLE USE OF ECOSYSTEM FOREST AND COMBAT DESERTIFICATION: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
Goal 16- PEACE AND JUSTICE: ACCESS TO JUSTICE FOR ALL-Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institution at all levels.
Goal 17- PARTNERSHIP FOR THE GOALS: REVITALISE GLOBAL PARTERSHIP– Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.
Rotn. TM Akeem Gbadamosi, M.Sc. Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management. Managing Partner, First-Goldmine Consulting (An Human Resource Management and Development Services Firm)